The invention relates to a wire retainer and a diagonal cutting nipper or box joint nipper with such a retainer, which is made from sheet metal and intended for attaching to a side nipper of the kind consisting of two members crossing each other at a hinge or joint portion, these members being pivotably kept together by a hinge means at the joint portion and forming jaws with cutting edges forwards of the joint portion of the nipper and arms rearwards of the joint portion thereof. Such a wire retainer, when fitted to one member of the box joint nipper, serves to prevent offcuts from dropping when cutting wire with the nipper. The retainer has a wire retaining tongue projecting out along one jaw of the nipper and adapted for coming into resilient yielding engagement against the edge of the second jaw when the jaws are closed, to retain a wire offcut between it and the second jaw until the jaws have been opened slightly. Box joint nippers of this kind are primarily used in producing electronics components and electronic equipment, as well as during servicing such equipment.
Previously known types of such wire retainers and box joint nippers provided with them are burdened with a troublesome disadvantage. These earlier retainers are adapted for being riveted or screwed to the nipper. A wire retaining tongue, irrespective of how well adapted it is, will always obscure some small part of the workpiece and can be an operational hinder, resulting in that a nipper without a retainer is preferably used where there is no danger of flying or falling wire offcuts causing any damage. In other cases, however, there is the risk that wire cutoffs could cause eye injuries, for example, or remain in the workpiece to cause functional disturbances later on, and with many items of electronic equipment having an important function from the point of view of safety, this could lead to personal injury as well as damage to material. As a safety measure it is therefore very often necessary to use a nipper with a wire retainer. In practice, this can to some extent have led to the unnecessary use of nippers provided with wire retainers which have been an operational hindrance, and perhaps such a nipper has not been used on some occasions where it would have been an advisable safety measure for preventing wire offcuts from coming into sensitive places. This would have been for the same reason in both cases, i.e. that only one nipper was available, and that it was too troublesome either to remove the wire retainer or to attach one.